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Tired same-y comments? What do you want to hear about other's experiences with your game?

A topic by porkrind created Jun 02, 2023 Views: 156 Replies: 5

Viewing posts 1 to 4

porkrindSubmitted1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

[TLDR below]

So, like everyone here, I've been spending a few hours each day this week checking out the interesting ideas / creations everyone has come up with. After my play through I typically read a few other comments people are making before I post mine, so that if I have a similar type of feedback as someone else, so that I can expand on the idea rather than repeat it. However, I've started noticing something that I don't think was as common last year...

When I'm reading through comments from game-to-game, I start getting major deja vu with similar or copy-paste comments. While I'm sure a chunk of that has to do with karma farming, which is inevitable and I won't get into here, I think there's another aspect where, after playing 30, 50, 100 games in a week, it could become hard to think of something specific for each and every game.

TLDR: Given how everyone here has put hours and hours of work into their game, and I'm sure would love to hear the genuine experiences from others, I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss what you, as a developer, would like to hear from your fellow jam devs?

For me, I really enjoy hearing about a specific game interaction /aspect that stood out to the player or gave them an emotional reaction - whether they found something really satisfying / fun / spooky, or even frustrating or confusing. I think that can help people find their specific strengths in designing games and hone them in.

What are your thoughts?

I'll also try to check out your games along the way and see if I can incorporate feedback that you think would help.

jennadamscodesSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

I think there are a few people karma farming. But I think the biggest issues are:

1. People not knowing how to give good feedback. They might not know how to put their thoughts on the game into words, so they just say something fairly generic that captures their feel.

2. People being afraid to upset people by saying something negative. Some people are probably worried about hurting the dev's feelings or coming across as condescending. And this can also be influenced by number 1, where they don't know how to give constructive feedback or word the things they didn't like in a way that is helpful and kind.

3. Just not having any particularly strong impressions that they can put into words. I've had this happen a few times while I was leaving feedback, although I've been trying to leave helpful comments and at least be specific about what I liked, even if I can't think of anything that needs to be improved.

I think something that should be included in the information and resources provided by the hosts of a game jam is information on how to give helpful feedback. That way everyone is on the same page and people who are less skilled at giving feedback -- because it is a skill -- would have some guidance.

Just my thoughts on the matter. :)

porkrindSubmitted1 year ago

Weird - I think my reply didn't save.

I 100% agree with all three points. I think it would almost make sense to have a secondary option when you are posting a comment. Maybe a prompt for 3 questions when you complete your rating of a game. I wonder if Itch has the ability to do something like that - my Jam experience is fairly limited outside of GDTV.

SatinelSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

I don't generally read what other people have said about a game before I leave a comment with my review, though I sometimes skim them afterward and feel a bit self-conscious if someone recently said basically the same thing I did. I don't think that's actually a bad thing to give similar feedback as other people and the most important thing is to relay my personal experience as a player of the game, how it made me feel, what I liked about it, what I thought could work better and so on.

As a developer you only 'need' to hear about a bug once to know it's something which needs to be fixed, but for honest feedback it's helpful to know how often that bug is being encountered and how much it's affecting the experience of players when it does happen. Likewise, if a lot of people praise the same aspect of your game it doesn't mean they're simply grabbing something to be positive about; it probably means that's what makes your game stand out in the minds of many different people, which is very good information to have.

If you want to know about a specific thing in your game, you usually need to ask people about that directly. Fortunately that's where the ratings help, on Monday we'll see what people thought of our games in several different categories, averaged out. Still, don't take those numbers as absolutes and don't take any single comment as being definitive. Ten comments about ten different things in your game shouldn't have the same weight as five people who all agree about a single aspect of your game and felt like commenting on it.

Or that's what I think at this time. :)

porkrindSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

To clarify, - I completely agree that similar feedback can actually be a great thing and I think that's bound to happen when there's something that stands out about the game. My comment is more about having some specificity vs comments that are so general they could be comments about 90% of games.

I think one of the common criticisms of my game was a great one that was tied to the core controls, which I really appreciated because it's making me think hard about the design decisions and control sacrifices I made. That was really cool to learn because as someone who played the game 100s of times, I was far too used to the controls to even consider it much of a sacrifice pre-release.

I guess what actually ends up being my favourite thing about these jams , besides the hands-on experience, is the opportunity to discuss our designs with peers. We all get to share in the pain of pushing something to the finish line and have opportunities to strengthen our approach / perspective. Though I acknowledge that everyone's goals/expectations here are different. I'm sure last year, when I released my first game to the public on the jam, all I cared about was that I made something and people played it.

And yeah, the court of public opinion is not far away now :)

ednekebnoSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

There's a sea of general comments, some for the wrong reasons, some because maybe (as I have done on a couple of occasions) someone found something okay but don't really have any suggestions or the dev clearly already has future plans in mind, and some I'm sure because the comments being non-anonymous can have a bit of kickback if you accidentally upset someone (the format as a whole discourages honesty a little bit).

I've noticed what a few people do in feedback is to give a clear indication they've played the game. by mentioning something they would not know if they hadn't. Then list any bugs they came across (which is an easy win for a dev to fix later), any more general issues, and suggestions. These I find the best feedback and I've tried to take onboard this sort of style when I'm doing it. I wish a bit that itch.io didn't have comment fields for this but some kind of mini survey/standard questions like "What did you enjoy", "Were there bugs", "Were there other issues", "Do you have ideas to improve the game or ideas for paths for future development". It would discourage those not giving genuine feedback and give some direction for those giving genuine feedback.